History in the Making

'68 Olympic Trials Marathon changed the course of American running

Moore, meanwhile, showed up the day before the marathon, race-fit and ready to roll. The 1967 AAU cross country champion and former University of Oregon All-American had been training since March in the 7,300-foot elevation of Los Alamos, NM, with the hopes of making the U.S. team in the 10,000-meter run.

When he and coach Bill Bowerman learned that the other trials competitors would only have two months of altitude training in Alamosa, they figured it made sense for Moore to try his luck at the marathon, too. His arrival was stealth by design.

“My tactics of being the mysterious outsider kept me from hearing any talk about favorites,” he said. “I didn’t meet Frank Shorter until a year later and didn’t know Amby at all. I was a Westerner.”

Shorter, who would win Olympic marathon gold four years later in Munich and silver in ‘76, was still a rank amateur among amateurs in Alamosa. These were the last purely open trials where anyone who got there was permitted to run for a chance to qualify for the Olympic team.

“The night before the race, Frank knocked on my door, said he had come down to try the marathon and had no road shoes,” Burfoot recalls. “He asked if he could borrow a pair of mine. I told him ‘It’s pretty risky to wear shoes you’ve never worn before in a 26-mile race.’”

Shorter, then a 20-year-old Yale junior, found out how risky the next day. He ran until the borrowed racing flats ripped his feet apart, leaving him with a DNF for his first attempt at the marathon.

The 22-year-old Burfoot didn’t fare any better. His race ended when he dropped out after three laps.

“My actual race was a complete implosion,” Burfoot recalls. “I never got going, never moved up through the pack as I hoped I would at some point, and felt the pulled muscle with every step. There was no hope, so I quit at 15 miles.”

He went back out to watch the finishers come in, standing next to the wife of eventual third-place finisher Ron Daws. She was trying to take pictures but was crying and trembling with the excitement of her husband’s Olympic team berth.